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Updated: May 18, 2025
Then without warning, after perhaps a minute that seemed like ten minutes, she walked away, slowly, into the rain. And as she did so, Edwin could just see her straightening her spine and throwing back her shoulders with a proud gesture. "I say, Miss Lessways!" he called in a low voice. But he had no notion of what he wanted to say. Only her departure had unlocked his throat. She made no sign.
Lessways, for the 'place' was not merely an easy place, it was a 'good' place. Supposing that Mrs. Lessways refused to have her, well, Florrie might go on to a 'potbank' and come to harm, or she might engage herself with tradespeople, where notoriously the work was never finished, or she might even be forced into a public-house.
Only I'm afraid I haven't got enough to pay the cabman." But while she was speaking she knew from Sarah Gailey's face that the worst and the most ridiculous of her night-fears had been justified by destiny. Three days previously Mrs. Lessways had been suddenly taken ill in the street. A doctor passing in his carriage had come to her assistance and driven her home.
At your place?" Edwin adopted the same cautious tone. Stifford, outside, strained his ears in vain. The magic word `girl' had in an instant thrown the shop into agitation. The shop was no longer provincial; it became a part of the universal. "Yes. Haven't you seen her about?" "No. Who is she?" "Oh! Friend of Janet's. Hilda Lessways, her name is. I don't know much of her myself."
"You've only got to open your mouth, and you'd talk anybody into the middle of next week." "Mother!" Hilda mildly reproved. She was convinced now that Mr. Cannon had come on purpose to clinch the affair. He laughed appreciatively. "But really! Seriously!" he insisted. And Mrs. Lessways, straightening her face, said, with slight self-consciousness: "Oh, I think it's worth while considering!"
In front of her, on a half-dried space of clean, shining floor, stood Mrs. Lessways, her head wrapped in a flannel petticoat. Nearer to the child stretched a small semi-circle of liquid mud; to the rear was the untouched dirty floor. Florrie was looking up at her mistress with respectful, strained attention. She could not proceed with her work because Mrs.
"Mother!" she demanded sharply; and she was astonished by her awkwardness and her sharpness. "Is that you?" her mother asked, in a queer, foolish tone. They kissed. Such a candid peacemaking had never occurred between them before. Mrs. Lessways, as simple in forgiveness as in wrath, did not disguise her pleasure in the remarkable fact that it was Hilda who had made the overture.
So that, what with this gaiety, and the stimulation produced in Mrs. Lessways by the visit of Mr. Cannon, and the general household relief at the obvious fact that Florrie would rather more than 'do, the atmosphere around the tinkling tea-table in the half-light was decidedly pleasant. Nevertheless the singular turn of Mrs. Lessways' phrase, "You've got your way," had startled the guilty Hilda.
Lessways had contracted a severe cold in the head, a malady to which she was subject and which she accepted with fatalistic submission, even pleasurably giving herself up to it, as a martyr to the rack. Mrs.
The lobby clock, which stood over six feet high and had to be wound up every night by hauling on a rope, was noisily getting ready to strike two. But for Mrs. Lessways' disorderly and undesired assistance, Hilda's task might have been finished a quarter of an hour earlier. She passed quietly up the stairs.
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